extraordinary%20encounters

34 Aura Rhanes
stroyed. Like the Iliad and the Odyssey, it has
managed to survive for more than two millennia.
But unlike Homer’s epic poems, Plato’s
tale—rarely considered an important part of
his voluminous output—has not only survived
as a demonstration of the storyteller’s
art, but also has become a part of our own
mythology.”
See Also: Bermuda Triangle; Channelings; Hollow
earth; Lemuria; Mount Shasta; Shaver mystery
Further Reading
Cayce, Edgar, 1968. Edgar Cayce on Atlantis. New
York: Paperback Library.
De Camp, L. Sprague, 1970. Lost Continents: The At -
lantis Theme in History, Science, and Literature.
New York: Dover Publications.
Donnelly, Ignatius, 1882. Atlantis: The Antediluvian
World. New York: Harper.
Ellis, Richard, 1998. Imagining Atlantis. New York:
Alfred A. Knopf.
Omar, Steve, 1996. “History of the Golden Ages,
Volume I.” http://www.nii.net/~obie/historygold.htm
Spence, Lewis, 1924. The Problem of Atlantis. London:
Rider.
Steiner, Rudolf, 1968. Cosmic Memory: Prehistory of
Earth and Man. West Nyack, NY: Paperback Library.
Aura Rhanes
Heavy-equipment operator Truman Bethurum
encountered the beautiful Aura Rhanes,
captain of a “scow” (spaceship) from the idyllic
planet Clarion, on the other side of the
moon, in the early morning hours of July 28,
1952, in the Nevada desert. When male crew
members ushered him inside the craft, parked
in an area known locally as Mormon Mesa,
Bethurum saw Aura Rhanes for the first time.
She was small, had an olive complexion, and
wore a black and red beret. The two engaged
in an extended conversation, during which
they asked each other about their respective
worlds. The spacewoman spoke, Bethurum
would write, “in a swinging, rhythmic tone of
voice” (Bethurum, 1954). When daylight
came, Bethurum was asked to leave, but they
were to meet again. There were eleven meetings
between July and November alone. Only
on the occasion of the third meeting, on Au-
gust 18, did she reveal her name. Once he
spotted her walking down a street in Las
Vegas, but she refused to speak with him, apparently
not wanting to be recognized.
Bethurum participated actively in the
1950s contact movement. Most outside observers
believed him to be a hoaxer. His wife,
Mary, apparently felt otherwise. She divorced
him in 1956 on the grounds that he was having
sexual relations with Aura Rhanes. As with
many other contactees from that period, it is
impossible to judge just what Bethurum believed
or did not believe about his reported interactions
with extraterrestrials. A privately
kept scrapbook published after his death carried
a poem titled “Third Visit to Mormon
Mesa Aug 18 1952” commemorating the
meeting in which Aura Rhanes let him touch
her to convince him of her physical reality.
Other items in the scrapbook consist of clippings
about himself and of materials lending
support to his story. Though a skeptic of contact
claims, British writer Hilary Evans remarks
that “we still have no yardstick whereby
we can separate contactees into ‘genuine’ and
‘fake’, and until we can establish some such
criteria, we must provisionally extend the benefit
of the doubt even to poor old Truman
Bethurum and cute little Aura Rhanes from
the far side of the Sun” (Evans, 1987).
See Also: Bethurum, Truman; Contactees
Further Reading
Bethurum, Truman, 1954. Aboard a Flying Saucer.
Los Angeles: DeVorss and Company.
———, 1982. Personal Scrapbook. Scotia, NY: Arcturus
Book Service.
Evans, Hilary, 1987. Gods, Spirits, Cosmic Guardians.
Wellingborough, Northamptonshire, England:
Aquarian Press.
Aurora Martian
An article in the April 19, 1897, edition of the
Dallas Morning News told an extraordinary
story in a very few words. Datelined Aurora,
forty-five miles northwest of Dallas, it related
that a mysterious “airship” had crashed into a
local windmill at 6 A.M. two days earlier. On
colliding, “it went to pieces with a terrific ex-